Hywel Francis: Employment prospects in my constituency, Aberavon, have been significantly strengthened as a result of the recent announcement of £71 million worth of investment in the Port Talbot Corus steel plant, and also the Tata acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover. Will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming these developments, particularly the investment in environmental improvement, which will strongly support the excellent Neath Port Talbot council's clean air charter? Will he also consider an early visit to my constituency to meet the new managing director of the Corus steel plant, Mr. Chaturvedi, to discuss future employment prospects in the Welsh steel industry?

Huw Irranca-Davies: Actually, I can correct the hon. Gentleman slightly—there is improvement going on, not deterioration. The latest figures, for February 2008, show that in the last year alone the number of Welsh patients waiting for in-patient or day-case treatment in an English hospital has dropped by more than 22 per cent. and that the number of Welsh patients waiting for up to 36 weeks for an out-patient appointment in an English hospital has dropped by nearly 20 per cent. We appreciate that there is more work to do, but we are heading in the right direction.

Paul Flynn: The reason why we have drug-free wings in prison is that we do not have any drug-free prisons. Is it not a continuing disgrace that under Governments of both parties, we have never been able to control drugs in prisons? The tragedy that continues these days is that people who go in as users and come out clean, who are put down as successes for the prison system, often die very quickly. Two of my constituents came out of prison drug-free: one lived a week, and another lived a day.

Paul Murphy: I have regular discussions with ministerial colleagues, chief constables and others on law and order issues in Wales, including policing. I welcome the fact that from 31 March, Welsh communities are fully covered by neighbourhood policing teams. That achievement follows three years of hard work by forces, police authorities and local communities.

Harriet Harman: I commend my hon. Friend on the work that he does in his all-party group. He is absolutely right: the whole House will want to express its solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe and its concern that they should have their democratic choice respected and recognised. Hon. Members in all parts of the House have raised the plight of the people in Zimbabwe. Four million people have been forced to flee that country. The average life expectancy is now down to 34 and the economy is in ruins, but today the eyes of the world are on Zimbabwe, which stands at a turning point. Robert Mugabe must respect the decision of his people.

Harriet Harman: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his congratulations, but I would like to ask him: why he is asking the questions today? He is not the shadow Leader of the House; the shadow Leader of the House is sitting next to him. Is this the situation in the modern Conservative party—that women should be seen but not heard? If I may, perhaps I could offer the shadow Leader of the House a bit of sisterly advice: she should not let him get away with it.

William Hague: I will not ever accuse the right hon. and learned Lady as being all jokes. We need not worry about that. But has she not just given a demonstration of how out of touch the Government have become? Five million families are worse off this weekend and the Prime Minister denies it; council tax has doubled as of this weekend; and 300,000 small businesses are worse off this weekend. Is not the question that the whole country is asking is why do we have to wait another two years to get rid of this discredited Cabinet and have a change of Government?

Harriet Harman: As I told the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), our concern is to ensure that people continue to have jobs. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the economy still contains 670,000 vacancies, and we want to ensure that it continues to grow as it has for some 62 consecutive quarters.

Derek Wyatt: Last Friday, after campaigning, I went to my local Bangladeshi curry house.  [Interruption.] I was told that members of the immigration service are now visiting Bangladeshi restaurants between 7 pm and 8 pm on Fridays and Saturdays—a critical period for any restaurant, because it is the busiest period of the week. They are closing the restaurants and clearing the customers out, and leave without paying for anything. The restaurant owners lose their revenue for Friday and Saturday nights, and are not allowed to telephone a solicitor or their Member of Parliament. That is not acceptable. Will my right hon. and learned Friend meet a group of Bangladeshi restaurant owners, so that we may at least change the process engaged in by the immigration service?

David Miliband: The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes an important point. I think he agrees with me that it is possible to be diplomatic in what one says without obscuring the fundamental truths that need to be expressed. He has expressed them in his own way. I have expressed the same sentiment. The shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), referred earlier to Kenya. We want to try and avoid a Kenya situation. We are in a pre-Kenya situation in one way, which could easily become a Kenya situation, with the violence to which the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) was referring. That is a huge challenge. Every time we describe the chaos that has taken place in Zimbabwe over the past few years, we dramatise the difficulties of precisely the sort of operation that he mentioned, but he can be assured that although we are trying to engage on the immediate issue, we have an eye on tomorrow as well as on today. We will do our best in that respect.

Gregory Campbell: Can the Foreign Secretary outline further what the Government will do to help the development of proper democracy in Zimbabwe and a move away from the corruption that has been endemic in that nation? Will he indicate what steps we can take to try and ensure that the 4 million refugees who had to leave Zimbabwe are allowed to return to help democracy flourish in that benighted land?

Peter Bottomley: There will be a great welcome when Zimbabwe again becomes a full member of the Commonwealth. When the election results come, may I commend to the Foreign Secretary two quick words? The first is from Kenneth Kaunda, who said when he stopped being President of Zambia, "You win some, you lose some," and secondly, the words of the Lord Privy Seal twenty-six years ago who, when criticised for the result of the elections after Lancaster house, said, "With free and fair elections, you can't always predict the result."

David Miliband: My hon. Friend leads me towards an important point. The temptations of the megaphone are very large indeed, especially where terrible things are being done, but sometimes the megaphone is not the best tool of diplomacy. Equally, to be timid is not right. To be silent is therefore to become complicit. The challenge for us all is to find a way to be effective without resorting to the megaphone which, in the end, becomes ineffective. We all need to recognise my hon. Friend's point about the striking support that continues or previously continued to exist for Robert Mugabe. As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), there will come a time for analysis. One of the things that will come out of that is that the megaphone that plays well here does not necessarily play well in the place that really matters. The challenge for us all is to make sure that we find the right implement.

David Miliband: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. In answering the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley), I did not give due attention to that issue. This is an opportunity for the Commonwealth to show its real worth in the modern age. I will certainly be in touch with the new Commonwealth secretary-general, who started yesterday, at the appropriate time.
	I believe in the Commonwealth. An organisation that covers a quarter of the world's population—north, east, south and west, and all races and religions—has the opportunity to show what it means for different countries to work together and make the phrase "the international community" mean something. This situation is a good example.
	I think that I am right in saying that it was Zimbabwe that pulled out of the Commonwealth, rather than the Commonwealth that kicked out Zimbabwe in the beginning. But I very much hope that, first, a new Government in Zimbabwe would want to rejoin the Commonwealth, and secondly, that the Commonwealth would give the country a very warm embrace.

Barry Gardiner: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make it an offence for any importer or distributor to sell or distribute in the United Kingdom any wood harvested, manufactured or otherwise dealt with illegally in the country from which the wood originated or through which it passed or was transhipped; and for connected purposes.
	In this House, we are charged with the responsibility of making law. Our constituents, who bestow that privilege upon MPs, expect us to use it wisely—that is, to solve genuine problems without imposing yet greater ones upon them. Good law should carry the consent of the public who are governed by it. To do so, it must be possible to explain clearly the need that the legislation seeks to address and how it meets that need efficiently and simply, with the minimum of bureaucracy. The Bill that I bring before the House meets those tests. I believe that the significant cross-party support and the public backing of more than 30 non-governmental organisations and industry bodies as diverse as the Environmental Investigation Agency, James Latham Ltd, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Global Witness and the Born Free Foundation demonstrate that this legislation is urgently needed and widely welcomed.
	Last year, the Stern report commissioned by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister pointed out that between 18 and 24 per cent. of all the greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change come from deforestation. If we put all the power stations in the world together—coal-fired, nuclear and all the other technologies for producing electricity—only then would we have a sector that contributed more to global warming than the loss of trees.
	Last December, in Bali, the United Nations forum on combating climate change led to an historic agreement among the nations of our world that deforestation was a major problem and that the means for avoiding it must form part of the post-Kyoto settlement. To do so requires that we create ways of rewarding sustainable forest management by the time of the Copenhagen conference of the parties in 2009.
	On the issue of forests, the world has declared that it shall run before it has even begun to walk. We cannot jump to sustainable forestry until we have established legal forestry. The World Bank estimates that trade in illegal timber amounts to US$15 billion every year. The UK is the fourth largest consumer market of imported tropical timber, yet only a fraction of it can be said with any degree of certainty to have been legally sourced and harvested in its country of origin. Illegal logging is a criminal activity. It corrupts and undermines governance in many countries across the globe. In doing so, it not only destroys forest ecosystems and contributes to carbon emissions but directly harms some of the poorest people on our planet—the indigenous forest-dwelling communities whose very livelihoods depend upon the forest. The $15 billion of this illegal trade is $15 billion that should be going into health care and education for them and their children.
	We declare our support for the millennium development goals, yet it is not an offence in the UK to trade for commercial gain timber that we know to have been harvested illegally in its country of origin. If we were dealing with private property such as stolen antiques or works of art, there would be no question but that those importing or selling those artefacts were regarded as criminals and dealt with according to the full force of the law. Yet in the UK, companies habitually trading in stolen timber have committed no crime and broken no law. My Bill would change that. Any distributor or importer who sold any wood that had been harvested, sold, taken or possessed illegally in the country from which the wood was originally harvested would be subject to various penalties, ranging from five years' imprisonment and a £100,000 fine down to a simple £5,000 fine, depending upon the degree of knowledge and degree of recklessness or good faith involved.
	I am grateful to the timber industry for its constructive engagement with my Bill, particularly given the severity of some of the penalties that it would impose. While recognising the pioneering work of companies such as Timbmet and others, I also want to acknowledge the help of the Timber Trade Federation, which has ensured that the Bill is much improved from its original draft. It now reflects the need to distinguish between three different cases: those who know full well that they are trading in illegal timber; those who should know but turn a blind eye and do not ask too many questions of their supplier if the price is right; and those who have acted at all times in good faith but are caught out by an honest mistake. Equally important, the best companies, which have diligently borne the expense of getting things right and have gone down the route of certification to ensure that they supply only legal and sustainable timber, would no longer see their products undercut by less scrupulous competitors.
	My Bill would achieve that not by imposing a ban on illegal timber at the border—that would demand an army of Customs agents well versed in the changing legislation of each producer country and able to check the various certificates and licences that might be deemed proof of legality—but by shifting the balance of risk by providing a clear incentive for companies to drive the burden of due diligence back down their own supply chain. Seals and ribbons that are the trappings of legality can be bought for $5 in the ports of far too many producer countries around the globe. Far better, then, that importers and distributors are put on notice that at any point they can be opened up to challenge and if found guilty will face substantial penalties. Not only Government agencies but NGOs and even the industry itself could bring forward evidence on which a prosecution could be based. The elegance of the Bill is that it does not seek to make a virtue out of catching those who do wrong but to alter the wrongdoers' behaviour by shifting the balance of risk against them. Ultimately, it is a Bill about protecting the environment, not catching thieves. To that end, it would apply Occam's razor by simplifying and cutting bureaucracy.
	The Bill should be seen in an international context—not solely as it relates to trade between countries but in the context of other legislative measures. I particularly wish to recognise the international negotiations between the European Union and countries such as Ghana, Malaysia and Indonesia in negotiating forest law enforcement, governance and trade voluntary partnership agreements—FLEGT VPAs. That would introduce a voluntary licensing scheme that would allow only legal timber from VPA countries to enter European markets. My Bill would complement FLEGT by catching unlicensed timber from VPA countries that was laundered through third-party countries. It is no accident that the European Commission is considering measures similar to my Bill under the additional options paper. However, they would not be passed by the European Parliament until 2010, and we should not wait that long.
	I must also point to the leadership given in the United States by Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator Ron Wyden, who have introduced similar legislation to that which I propose as an amendment to the Lacey Act. Their initiatives and foresight have inspired the content of my Bill. I acknowledge with gratitude the helpful discussions that I have had with them and their officials. If there is a race between us as to who can get such measures on to the statute book first, it is the only race I know where each runner is urging his competitor to go even faster than he himself is able. The signal that would be given to world markets by both our countries enacting such legislation is incalculable.
	Perhaps the single most important legislative initiative in relation to illegal logging is that of Japan. This year, Japan hosts the G8 summit as its president. For the past three years, Japan has developed various initiatives against illegal timber, including its highly regarded Gojo wood policy. I have been privileged to chair, with my good friend Mr. Yoshino, the illegal logging dialogue. The purpose of that dialogue has been to make recommendations to the G8 summit in Hokkaido that will combat illegal logging. My Bill would be one that the legislators in the United States already—

Vincent Cable: I beg to move,
	That this House notes with concern the risk of recession in the United Kingdom economy; recognises that although the collapse of the United States mortgage market and the global 'credit crunch' are a catalyst to the current downturn in the United Kingdom economy, record levels of personal debt and the extreme bubble in the housing market were already major destabilising factors; further notes that because of inflation and weak public finances there is little scope for stimulating demand; applauds the efforts of central banks to reintroduce stability into the world money markets, but warns against the use of taxpayers' money in bailouts which cause serious concerns about moral hazard; further notes with dismay rising levels of personal debt, exacerbated by high mortgage interest rates; further notes the rising evidence of a major slowdown in the United Kingdom housing market; registers with concern the increasing number of people requesting help regarding mortgage payments; further notes with concern that repossession orders are now at the same level as in 1990; regrets the Government's failure both to admit the current problems in the housing market and to act to prevent mass home repossessions; calls upon the Government to consider options being used in the United States, particularly to encourage banks to explore options other than repossession; and further calls upon the Bank of England to include house prices in the measure of inflation.
	I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce this debate on a motion in my name and those of my colleagues. Perhaps I will be able to pursue answers to questions that I was not able to ask earlier in our proceedings. The Government's reputation rests very heavily on their economic credibility and performance, and they have won two elections on that basis. Two propositions are at the heart of their credibility: the first is that they have enjoyed the longest period of economic growth since records began in 1701—I think that that is how the case is put—and the second is the mantra that there is now an end to boom and bust. The first of those two propositions is still true, but looking rather precarious, and the second is beginning to look rather ridiculous.
	This is an Opposition day debate, and I know that the convention is to deal with such matters in a rather Punch and Judy way, but I shall try to avoid doing so for several reasons. First, we are at the beginning rather than the end of a difficult period for the economy, and it may be that with good policies and good luck, we shall avoid the worst, such as something similar to what happened under the Tories 15 years ago. Secondly, some of the problems are home-grown and result from failures of Government policy, but some are imported—particularly the credit crunch—and the Government are not responsible for those. We need to acknowledge that there is a mixture of the two.
	The other point, which is technical but rather important, is that some of the problems we are now confronting are difficult and perhaps unprecedented. How does one deal with a big debt deflation problem, as it is called? How do we deal with the collapse of a bubble in an asset market such as housing? How do we deal with a drying up of credit in the banking system? Those are relatively new problems to which there are no obvious easy answers. I want to set some ideas for discussion as to how we might approach those questions.
	However, I do not want to be too generous. There are clearly criticisms that one can make of Government performance, and the central one is complacency. Many of the problems that we face were anticipated in the past. I recall raising the issue of the housing market and debt with the current Prime Minister in 2003. At that time, I put this to him:
	"On the housing market, is not the brutal truth that...the growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level?"—[ Official Report, 13 November 2003; Vol. 413, c. 398.]
	The then Chancellor's reply was that I was scaremongering, but the scariest thing about my scaremongering is that my predictions turned out to be largely correct. There are major concerns in that area.
	Let me just review the problems. First, we have an acknowledged slowdown in the economy. We are not in a recession, but the slowdown is acknowledged. The Government's forecasts are significantly more optimistic than the consensus among independent forecasters, who, a few weeks ago, were predicting 1.7 per cent. growth for the next year. Those estimates have been marked down week by week. We have other estimates from companies such as JP Morgan, the bank advised by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, that there is a one third risk of recession. Lehman Brothers have now joined it in making such an assessment.
	In addition, we have severe, outstanding problems, many of which relate to problems of personal debt in a range of households—not all of them, but a substantial number. The total amount of personal debt in relation to people's income is now roughly of the order of 160 per cent.—twice what it was when the Government came to office. It is the highest figure in our recorded history, and the highest in the developed world. Now, that is just a figure, and it does not necessarily relate to people's everyday lives. What does relate to their lives, however, is the amount of income that they have to spend in service of debt. That now stands at about 20 per cent. and comprises mortgage payments, interests on mortgages, unsecured loans and credit card payments. We are now at roughly the level of debt service required as during the great Tory recession of the early 1990s.

Vincent Cable: That figure probably is an overestimate, which also reflects the fact that many policies are extraordinarily expensive. Those who now recommend insurance as a way of dealing with the problem fail to take into account the large cost associated with payments protection insurance, so my hon. Friend is right.
	The concluding part of my remarks is about what can be done. Again, I want to be constructive and raise questions about ways forward, rather than just criticise how things are being managed now. First, what can be done within the conventional policy framework? Normally when there is an impending recession, the standard answer, which we learnt or taught from economics textbooks, is to cut interest rates and run a budget deficit—they are the standard apparatus of macro-economic policy—and that is indeed happening aggressively in the United States, but not here. We know that that is happening in the United States, because the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. Bernanke, did his PhD thesis on the great depression from 1929 onwards. He is terrified, and says so publicly, that we are in danger of repeating that experience. He is desperate to head it off and is doing whatever he can.
	Our problem is that the Government are enormously constrained in what they can do that is similar. They made a good decision 10 years ago to make the Bank of England independent. The Bank now sets interest rates, which are not politically driven, and is making it absolutely clear that its first responsibility is to follow its mandate, which takes account of inflation, which is currently above the level that it should be pursuing. Therefore, the Bank's scope for cutting interest rates aggressively is limited. In addition, the Government claim that they have stayed within their rules for fiscal policy, but we do not know that, because there is no independent monitoring. In fact, the Government are up against the very limit of their fiscal rules and have absolutely no scope for the kind of expansionary policy that one would hope for in a period of recession.
	Even if it were possible to do things those things—to cut interest rates aggressively and run a fiscal deficit—there is little evidence to suggest that they would solve the problems that we now face, because interest rate cuts are not being passed on by the banking system, for the reasons that I have described. The conventional policy framework is therefore not adequate. The question is whether we could reform it.
	My colleagues and I have argued for several years that the Bank of England should have within its mandate a responsibility to take account of the housing market, not just conventional inflation. If the Bank had done that, it would have raised interest rates sooner, in the boom, and would be able to cut them more aggressively in a slump, now. That is one concrete suggestion that should be considered.
	The second policy question is whether the Government should simply be watching the drama of repossession unfold or whether they should intervene to do something about it. The Government's position is currently entirely passive. They take the view that there is no great problem, and that in any event it is nothing to do with them. However, we should perhaps at least consider what the options are.
	The first option, which the Council of Mortgage Lenders and several non-governmental organisations, such as Shelter and the citizens advice bureaux, are pursuing, is for the Government to revive the pre-1994 idea of giving greater social security help to people in mortgage difficulties. It has been suggested that it would help, for example, if the Department for Work and Pensions could secure a second charge on a home as a way of giving extra help. That is not the best way forward, because we would effectively be transferring all the risk from the mortgage lenders who made loans in the first place to the taxpayer. However, if the crisis develops momentum, that kind of idea might have to be considered.
	What else could be done? One possibility, which we are keen to promote, is for the lenders to have a much greater responsibility, so that if a default is triggered, there should be a process whereby the debtors have access to independent financial advice and the banks are required to offer a range of payment alternatives, which might include shared ownership, for example. The banks will say, "Well, that's all in our code of conduct," and indeed it is, but there are plenty of rogue lenders who are not bound by that code and others who do not observe its spirit. My question for the Government is whether they are considering the arguments for and against making the code of conduct binding on the mortgage lenders, requiring them to do what is currently regarded as good practice.

Vincent Cable: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is another reason why the repossession crisis is so severe. It is not just a matter of people not having safety nets; the problem is that there is nowhere for them to go if they are repossessed. They are put into a desperate situation with virtually no social housing. There is an opportunity for the Government to reverse the negative net sale of public housing, which has been so damaging in the past.
	Let me move on to a third area where the Government should be thinking of reform and change. I want to respond directly to the intervention of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins), who correctly said that this problem is linked to the wider issue of the crisis within the banking system. I shall not digress widely into why the banks face a credit crunch, but we all know the essence of the problem: through very complicated financial instruments, debts, including bad debts from the sub-prime market, were bundled up and sold on in such a way that those bad debts can no longer be traced, as a result of which trust within the banking system has collapsed so that banks will no longer lend to each other, except at extreme rates, and the normal function of banking has broken down.
	The question then is what the British Government can do about it. This is partly an international problem, but it is also a very specifically British problem, because the City of London is probably the largest financial centre in the world and we are all affected by how its finances develop. What is happening—it has happened over the last few weeks—is that the banks are launching a major campaign to get the Bank of England to provide them with cash with minimum strings. What they would like is for the Government simply to advance cash in return for their mortgages, particularly their poor-quality mortgages. That is happening on a very large scale in the United States, where the state is effectively nationalising the losses and risks of the banking system. The banks would dearly love our Government and our authorities to do the same here.
	The Governor of the Bank of England has been taking quite a hard line on that, rather differently from his opposite numbers in the US, and I have a good deal of sympathy with him. However, he and the rest of us are confronted with a practical problem—if the banks are to continue to function and the financial system is not to seize up, there needs to be liquidity. The question then becomes under what conditions it should be provided.
	We may well be getting an answer to that question, but I would like to suggest an approach that I believe the Government should support in working with the Governor. By all means let more liquidity be provided in the banking system, which has to function as a lender to businesses and households, but there should be a condition. The condition is that the banks' shareholders should accept the losses that come with bad debt. They will have to do that by accepting what are called write-downs. They will have to do that by cutting their dividend payments, by rights issues, by sales, by forgoing acquisitions—all the sort of things that banks like doing. The are going to have to go through a period of austerity in order to get their own accounts in order. That would be the condition for the advance of liquidity. The banks will hate it; they will run campaigns in the financial newspapers, saying how terrible the Governor of the Bank of England is for being so stingy and not giving them what they want, but in those circumstances it is the job of the Government to provide political support for the Bank of England. The basic point is that our banks are too big to fail, but equally, they are too big for the Government to bail out all their losses and bad debts. They will have to carry this themselves and they will have to be helped to do it.
	My final point is about the future of regulation. As a result of this crisis, many of the assumptions that underlay the regulation of the financial system in Britain are having to be re-examined. We had a system of so-called light-touch regulation, which has in practice led to major financial institutions in the City behaving irresponsibly—behaving like casinos rather than lenders in many cases—and that has to be stopped. In the emergency circumstances of the present, we cannot rewrite all the rules, but in order to prevent this from happening in future, there will have to be a complete rethink of the way in which our financial institutions are regulated.
	The central change that needs to be made is to recognise that markets operate in cycles. This is not some unhappy circumstance; capitalist economies always operate cyclically. They may be more efficient and may function better at certain times, but they are very cyclical, so the authorities need to ensure that the reserves that banks hold reflect the cycle; in a boom period, they should be required to hold more, and they should be required to hold less in a downturn. The whole process by which financial institutions are managed needs to be much more proactive and much more aware of the cyclical nature of the industry.
	I put forward those ideas in a constructive spirit. I think that if the Government were to address them and come up with positive solutions rather than just waiting for events to happen, they might well avoid the damage that would result if they were simply to relive the experience of the great Tory recession.

Jane Kennedy: I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to end and add
	"acknowledges the resilience of the United Kingdom economy, which grew faster than any other major economy in 2007 and in which employment is at record levels; notes that the record of economic stability since 1997 has laid the foundation for rising home ownership, with the number of owner-occupier households rising by 1.8 million since 1997; further notes that household finances remain strong, with household assets worth over £7.5 trillion, more than five times the level of personal debt; believes that the United Kingdom is well placed to respond to the challenges arising from the continuing international financial turbulence; applauds the Government for managing the public finances within its fiscal rules; recognises that the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee has cut interest rates twice in recent months; further acknowledges that mortgage interest rates are currently around half the level of those reached in the early 1990s and that the proportion of repossessions is less than one third of the rate in the peak year of 1991; welcomes the Council of Mortgage Lenders' recent statement, which sets out the steps that the industry is taking to support borrowers facing repossession, including working with debt advisers, pro-actively identifying at-risk borrowers and only repossessing as a last resort; and supports the Government's initiatives to assist home ownership, including new measures to encourage long term fixed rate borrowing and new forms of shared equity."
	It is pleasure to discuss such an important topic. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) raised a number of points in opening the debate, and I should like to deal with each of them in turn. It is a routine but important courtesy to say what a pleasure it is to follow the opening speech, but it was a sore trial for me to listen quietly and respectfully to the Liberal Democrat party give a lecture on financial probity—no matter how scholarly the hon. Gentleman's manner.  [Interruption.] I will say exactly why.
	It is not what the Liberal Democrats say, but what they do in practice and in power that we should examine. Speaking as a Liverpool MP, I know how unfortunate it is for that city and its local economy to be one of the few places under Lib-Dem control and subject to their influence. Despite huge investment from the UK and the European Union, the Lib Dems have virtually bankrupted the city, which is officially classified as the worst council in the country for financial management. The burden of debt is beyond belief and former senior Liberal Democrats have characterised it as doing more damage to Liverpool than Militant. Having got that off my chest, I shall return to the points that the hon. Member for Twickenham made.

Julia Goldsworthy: I am listening carefully to the Minister. Does she therefore discount the evidence from Citizens Advice that the number of people coming to it expressing concerns about their ability to repay their mortgage is up a third on this time last year? Does she discount that all together?

Christopher Huhne: Is the right hon. Lady not, however, concerned that the key indicator for an asset market such as housing is debt service? Is she not concerned that the personal debt service of households in this country—not merely capital repayments, but capital payments plus interest payments—is now at the same sort of level that it was at the beginning of the 1990 to 1992 downturn? When she says that so far the fall in prices has been relatively modest, that was also the case at that point then. Will she confirm that fact?

Jane Kennedy: I shall come to individual financial capability, but first I want to address one point in the Liberal Democrat motion. It reads like a "Focus" leaflet—or, rather, like a Victorian penny thriller. It is full of hyperbole with few facts. It maximises the fear factor and does not let the truth get in the way of a good story. I shall give an example. The motion
	"notes with concern that repossession orders are now at the same level as in 1990".
	If we look at the number of repossessions that are actually taking place, that is not true.

Jane Kennedy: No, I have given way to the hon. Gentleman a number of times and I want to make some progress. Many other hon. Members want to speak in the debate.
	The number of repossessions in Britain remains relatively small. There were just over 27,000 repossessions in 2007 compared with 75,000 in 1991. That is despite there being almost 2 million more mortgages today than there were then. Last year, the number of properties taken into possession was just 0.23 per cent. of all mortgages, which is about a third of the rate in the early '90s.

Jane Kennedy: The hon. Gentleman has made a sensible suggestion, and we will consider it. The pilot that we propose is a significant piece of work which will make a real difference to people.

Mark Hoban: No, I will not be complacent about that, but I think we need to look at this matter objectively and carefully, instead of being irresponsible and seeking to create an atmosphere of panic and chaos, which is what the Liberal Democrats have done. The Financial Secretary has gone in the other direction: she sought to paint a much more rosy picture of the economy than the reality warrants and overstated the case, but she has minimised some of the legitimate concerns people have about the current state of the economy.
	Too often over recent months, all that we have heard from the Government is that all our problems have been caused by the global credit crunch. It is typical of this Government that they take the credit when times are good, but shift the blame when times are harder or more uncertain. The challenge in any crisis situation is how to handle it. It is a hallmark of good government to be prepared for a crisis and take control, rather than be buffeted by events.
	We saw yesterday at the Prime Minister's weekly press conference that he has no room for manoeuvre. He was looking to others to bail him out of a situation he has created for himself. He was encouraging the Bank of England to cut rates to boost growth—the Bank of England that he made independent. He has set an inflation target for the Bank, but he was looking for it to put that target to one side. He also called for the European Investment Bank to offer loans to businesses.
	The reality is that the Prime Minister, having mishandled public finances for the past 10 years, has no room for manoeuvre. Unlike Governments elsewhere in the developed world, he cannot offer tax cuts to help hard-pressed families or to lift the burden on businesses, because this month we are seeing increased taxes on families, small companies and wealth creators. So at a time when families are facing economic uncertainty, they cannot expect the Government to help them. There is no denying the fact that families are facing economic uncertainty; I accept that. People need to use more measured language, however. Interestingly, the hon. Member for Eastleigh used far more measured language than his colleagues on this issue. Perhaps he is auditioning for another part in the future.

Mark Hoban: I am not sure I would ever look to the hon. Gentleman for guidance, and certainly not on how to vote, as I think that so far he has not backed a single successful candidate for leader of the Liberal party.  [Interruption.] He refers from a sedentary position to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg). I read part of the  GQ interview this week. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire wants to share his experiences of running for office. I shall move on, however, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I suspect you would like me to do so.
	Despite cuts in the Bank of England's base rate, many families' mortgage repayments will increase when more than 1 million fixed rate or discounted deals come to an end this year. The widening gap between the base rate and the LIBOR is a sign of continued uncertainty about and a current lack of trust in the financial markets. That means that home owners will not necessarily receive the full benefit of recent base rate reductions.
	In addition, the restriction on the availability of credit means that lenders are tightening their conditions. For example, the Co-op has cut its maximum loan-to-value ratio from 95 to 90 per cent.; and the Nationwide's subsidiary The Mortgage Works has withdrawn its offer of 100 per cent. mortgages, as has Scottish Widows which yesterday withdrew its 100 per cent. mortgage aimed at young professionals, who will now have to find a deposit. First Direct has closed its mortgage business to new customers because it could not process the volume of applications it received. The problems in the global credit market therefore mean not only that customers will face higher rates when existing deals come to an end, but that credit itself is being rationed through tougher rules and conditions. Those with equity in their homes or with substantial deposits may well be able to meet tighter conditions imposed by lenders. For those without either, existing mortgage customers will be forced to stay on relatively high standard variable rates, and those aspiring to get on the property ladder will have to save for longer.
	In times of economic uncertainty, people naturally turn to the Government for help and they hope that the Government will do something to lift the tax burden from them or will understand that costs are rising. However, because this Government failed to prepare for difficult times, no relief is on offer. Last month's Budget saw taxes increase on alcohol and new cars—tax increases that are in place to plug the hole opening up in the Chancellor's numbers, and that will raise the cost of living as well as take money out of families' pockets. Also, this month we will see tax increases such as the scrapping of the 10p band.
	The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) certainly understands what is happening, judging by an article in  The Guardian today. She said:
	"We have always wanted to support those on lower incomes, we have done an enormous amount with things like the minimum wage to raise people out of poverty"
	and
	"I think therefore anything that hits people on lower incomes is perhaps something we are particularly sensitive to in the Labour party."
	I think the hon. Lady had a point.
	Apparently, the Prime Minister claimed that no one would be worse off as a consequence of scrapping the 10p rate, but that is certainly not the evidence that was given to the Treasury Committee in its inquiry into the 2007 Budget. The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury was a member of that Committee, and I think signed off the report that was published. Robert Chote of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in an evidence session that 5.3 million families would lose out as a consequence of the scrapping of the 10p rate, and Mark Neale, managing director of the budget, tax and welfare directorate at the Treasury, said:
	"the figures that Robert Chote gave you are in the right ball-park".
	Therefore, many people will be worse off as a consequence of the scrapping of the 10p rate—older pensioners, and many couples and single earners without children. No Labour Member should be fooled by the Prime Minister's reassurances of earlier this week. The change will hit their constituents, and mine, hard.

George Mudie: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has spoken to Robert Chote since, but at a presentation in Parliament on this year's pre-Budget report he put the figure much lower. He has seriously revised down the number of those who would lose because of the scrapping of the 10p rate. Will the hon. Gentleman make arrangements to meet Robert Chote?

Mark Hoban: The Exchequer Secretary says that it was way above her pay grade, but of course it was not way above her pay grade at the time to recognise that 5.3 million households were going to lose out as a consequence of scrapping the 10p rate of income tax.
	Before we got slightly distracted, we were discussing the impact that the introduction of home information packs has had on the housing market. It is not surprising that  Which? has said:
	"The new 'half-HIP' will be a useless but a very expensive waste of time...This half-baked compromise will result in something that is of little value but of real expense to consumers and Which? cannot therefore continue to provide support".
	One can always rely on  Which? to come up with a pithy judgment: one of its former directors, who is now a No. 10 employee, said:
	"Gordon Brown doesn't need a new speechwriter he needs a magician".
	As one can see,  Which? is very good at identifying the issues in consumer problems; it does not always identify the solution, but it identifies the cause of the problem.
	The Government's interference in the housing market has not helped the situation. The poor state of the housing market, a squeeze on the cost of living, and higher taxes and higher borrowing costs make it more difficult for families to make ends meet, and could therefore lead to higher levels of repossessions. The rise in stamp duty revenues, which has been such a godsend for the Government's tax take, has become a problem for first-time buyers, who now pay an average of just under £1,700.
	When lenders were more relaxed about multiples and were happy to combine secured and unsecured loans, such as with the Together loan, which has been the topic of debate over recent months, first-time buyers could roll stamp duty up into their mortgage but now, with tighter rules and lower loan-to-value ratios, they will need to fund stamp duty up front. That will add both a further barrier to their buying their first home and another brake on the housing market. That is why we announced last October that we would abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers on properties costing less than £250,000, which would mean that nine out of 10 first-time buyers would no longer have to stump up for stamp duty. That would offer practical help for first-time buyers.
	As I said, we need to be wary about talking down the housing market, but we must recognise that conditions are tough and we must strike the right balance in this debate. The combination of higher taxes, lower real earnings, a tighter housing market, higher mortgage interest rates and tougher conditions on home loans creates uncertainty and difficulty. People whose fixed-rate mortgages are coming to an end particularly need to look at the options available to them. They need to find the best deal available and secure it before they flip on to the default option of the higher standard variable rate.
	The pressure of higher mortgage rates and rising living costs will mean that more families will find it harder to make ends meet, but given the relative ready availability of consumer credit, people must avoid the temptation to pay for everyday essentials using their credit cards, as that could lead to further problems. People facing financial hardship should seek advice sooner rather than later so that they can take control of their financial affairs, rather than allow someone else to do so at a later stage when their situation has deteriorated. Services such as Citizens Advice, the Money Advice Trust and the Consumer Credit Counselling Service all offer advice to people struggling with their bills.
	The scale of any problems will depend in part on the overall economic circumstances. Four key factors have driven economic growth in recent years: finance, housing, public spending and immigration. Finance has grown four times as fast as the economy as a whole; housing has grown twice as fast as the economy as a whole; and the size of government has grown a third more than the economy itself. So the credit crunch will have a growing impact on the fast-growing financial services sector. That factor was borne out by yesterday's CBI survey of employers in that area: future job losses in the sector were predicted, as was the impact on housing of the tighter availability of credit. Both those factors will impact on tax revenues in the year ahead.
	Problems are potentially on the horizon, which is why we need to broaden the base of economic growth and encourage a series of reforms to get the economy back on track again so that we have broader base of growth in future. Because the Government failed to prepare for a rainy day, they have been forced through necessity to rein back in the growth of public spending below the rate of growth of the economy as a whole. We have that policy by conviction; it is the sort of policy that allows a Government to prepare for a rainy day.
	We are heading towards difficult and uncertain times, but the hon. Member for Twickenham has done hard-working families no favours by talking up the problems in the market. Having said that, we cannot afford to be complacent either. The Government have failed to prepare the economy for these times and they have let the public finances get out of control. While our competitors can cut taxes to support families and businesses, this Government have had to raise them. Householders see the rising cost of living and increased mortgage payments, but they cannot expect the Government to help, as this year's Budget showed. It included tax increases on alcohol and cars, and the scrapping of the 10p rate. This Government have let our families down at a time of uncertainty by failing to prepare. They will pay a price for that.

George Mudie: I think I understood why the Minister was upset with the Liberal Democrats about the motion. They have done the serious subject of repossessions no service through the terms of the motion. For example, the Conservative shadow Minister spoke for 20 minutes, 15 minutes of which concerned the economy, but because of the careless, lazy ritual and the Punch and Judy system that we have—

George Mudie: I am primed by my hon. Friend, who is seated on my left, to say, "Talking down the economy", but I would not say that. I can tell the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter) that I object to the fact that we have had days of debate on the Budget. He was not with the hon. Member for Twickenham and me last night—perhaps it was the night before—when we debated the economy and Northern Rock for an hour and a half. The hon. Member for Cheadle had gone back to bed by then. The economy has had more airtime over the past few months than we would wish, but people outside are in danger of losing their homes, which is the most traumatic thing that could happen to most people and families in their lifetime. The Liberal Democrats, through careless framing, have allowed the Conservative shadow Minister to spend three quarters of his time running around the economy and only five minutes dealing with repossessions. They have allowed the Minister to spend a fair amount of time, as she has a responsibility to do, rebutting the lazy and careless framing of the motion on the economy. I do not think that that is sensible.
	I want to speak quietly and seriously about the emerging worry about a credit crunch—the Opposition can blame Government and the Government can blame this or that—that has come from America, which is affecting and has affected the economy, particularly the financial sector. Like a virus, it is continuing to mutate so that when we think we have the measure of it and will be able to deal with it, it moves on. We are seeing that mutation and those worries. It is not a question of sub-prime mortgages. As we sit here, 2 million people have mortgages that they took out in 2006 which will run out.
	I do not know whether hon. Members or the Minister have read the example given in the Library notes. A young couple with two children from Northamptonshire, who are both working, have been caught out by this problem. Their mortgage runs out this year, and it is with Northern Rock. One would think that, with it being nationalised and owned by a Labour Government, there would not be any trouble—that was something else that we discussed the other night. Northern Rock is operating very fiercely, however, like other building societies, because it does not want the business. The credit crunch has mutated and moved on, and mainstream building societies and banks are finding it difficult to get money to service mortgages. When a mortgage is up, they are encouraging people to move on. They are doing so in a pretty bad way: the offer that pulled people in disappears.
	A particularly appropriate point was just thrown away by the hon. Member for Twickenham. It is outrageous that the very same building society or bank that brought someone in with a low mortgage has often encouraged them to take a further loan that is not secured. The hon. Gentleman indicated that such loans are now not just a couple of per cent. on top of what people were paying for their mortgage, but can shoot up to something like 15 or 16 per cent. The young couple that I mentioned were hit with a double whammy. Their mortgage is going up by £200 a month, which is something like £40 to £50 a week. To a young couple with a young family, every penny matters, and that bill comes on top of something that is outside the control of anyone in central Government—energy and food costs. They have to pay the extra £40 to £50 a week on that part of their mortgage, and 15 to 16 per cent. on the capital sum that the institution giving the loan was so anxious for them to take. When the deal runs out, people discover that that institution does not want them, and that there is a heavy penalty for staying with it.
	I think—no, I do not think, I know—that that is happening. The word on the street is that two months ago, there were 100 main mortgage lenders. There are now 20. Nobody is anxious to pick up mortgages, so they are being shuffled around. Just yesterday, as we have heard, First Direct stopped giving mortgages because it was overwhelmed by the number of people coming to it. It just put a block on them. That takes us back to times that elderly Members on the Opposition Front Bench will remember— [Interruption.] I mean the Conservative Front Bench. They will remember when people used to have to get in a queue for a mortgage, and had to save with the institution for a period of time to prove that they were good customers. Even the young fellow on the Opposition Back Benches, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), remembers those days. We are getting to that stage now, and it is very worrying.
	Advice is a good idea, but although it is easy to give and relatively non-costly, I always worry about whether it gives a solution to a young couple such as I have mentioned. How will they get through the coming months and keep their family intact? That is the problem that we have.
	A lack of liquidity is affecting the banks and building societies. The Governor of the Bank of England has referred to it. A month ago or so, he thought that the financial economy had a problem but that it would not move into the real economy. It is now in the first stages of moving on into the real economy, and it is doing so in housing. Youngsters and families are having difficulties, and I say to the Minister that those difficulties will grow. At the moment, we can be calm and think that the situation is under control, but we should look a few months ahead. If the situation continues, repossessions will move at a rate. We should be considering and discussing measures to take to nip that in the bud, so that we can get through this temporary period of credit crunch and liquidity crisis, and keep people intact in their own homes.
	The hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned the business of social security. One thing that the Conservative Government did was to ensure that, if someone lost their job, they could move on to income support. As part of that, the interest payment on their mortgage was met. That Government ruled that for a person to be eligible, they had to be unemployed for nine months. The trouble with that in relation to mortgages is that most building societies or banks make a move after three months of non-payment. The hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest that the Government should restore the nine-month provision, but that might not be appropriate in the current financial crisis. What would be appropriate would be for building societies to agree not to take action against an individual for nine months, unless a lack of equity in that person's home made the problem impossible to get around.
	I ask the Minister to imagine a situation whereby the young couple mentioned in the Library notes continued to pay their mortgage and then got hit with this problem, perhaps because one of them lost their job. They would not be helped for nine months. I have a history on this matter: I raised it with the Governor of the Bank of England when he first came before the Treasury Committee to talk about the credit crunch, last September. He makes a shop steward in a shipyard look weak in terms of demarcation, and he told me, "This is not my responsibility." I still pleaded with him to say whether something could be done in financial circles, because the way that the market was going was obvious. We have obviously had no luck.
	The Government have set up a working party—a review, I suppose we would call it. The trouble is that it is not— [Interruption.] I am not sure whether the signal that I have just received was to keep going or to sit down. I shall sit down. One never knows with the usual channels.  [Interruption.] Thank you. If my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) had given me that message some time ago, he would have saved me a lot of work.
	The working party has two faults: it is not reporting for the purposes of the pre-Budget report in the autumn, and it seems to me that it is preoccupied by the Government's preoccupation, which is long-term mortgages. That might be good, but let us park it up somewhere for the moment, because it is not too useful in the present circumstances. I rather fear that the working party's main preoccupation is how to get such mortgages accepted and deliver them. If we are to have a working party of all the financial people, I plead with the Minister to get it to shove that work aside and do some quick work on the looming crisis. That way, we can do things without necessarily baling out or calling on Government expenditure.
	One criticism raised by both Labour and Conservative Members was that the Bank of England and its Governor did not act when the credit crunch started and we had the Northern Rock crisis. Unlike Bernanke and the Fed, and even unlike US Treasury Secretary Paulson, there was no sign in this country that anyone thought it worth getting the interested parties together for the sort of beer-and-sandwiches meeting that happened under Harold Wilson. At those meetings, heads were knocked together and people were told that they could not leave until a solution had been found. We did not do that with Northern Rock, and we have regretted that. I think that, in the interim, the working party should be reconstituted, and that its members should kick around possible solutions to a crisis that I hope the Minister realises is very serious.

George Young: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie), who is a formidable and knowledgeable member of the Treasury Committee. Unlike him, however, I will need no prompting about when to sit down, as I propose to make a relatively short contribution. The best bit of his speech was when he described the pressures facing an ordinary family: already hit by rising fuel and food costs, such a family could now be forced to come off a fixed-rate mortgage in favour of a more expensive standard rate loan. That simply adds to the problems confronting them and in some cases could lead, sadly, to repossession.
	I want to focus my remarks on the second and third legs of the debate title—repossessions and the housing market. We have heard about the impact of the banking crisis on the housing market, and there have been some powerful speeches about those who face repossession and those who cannot afford to make their mortgage payments. I want to focus on some of the less obvious casualties in the housing market, namely those who look to the social housing sector for a solution to their housing difficulties. They are also tied up in this crisis and, paradoxically, their numbers will be swollen by those who find that they are repossessed and those for whom home ownership is no longer a practical possibility.
	There has been a fundamental change over the past 25 years in how we fund social housing. If we had had this debate in the early 1980s, the sorts of trends that we have been talking about this afternoon would have had no impact at all on social housing. That is because the Government used to give local authorities powers to borrow, and they built local authority homes. Alternatively, the Government gave grants to housing associations that went on to built housing association properties. So in those days the social housing market was insulated against the broader trends that we have discussed this afternoon; that is, the liquidity problems in the banking sector would have had no resonance in the social housing sector.
	That has all changed today, for two principal reasons. First, housing associations now have to borrow significant sums of money from the banks. Secondly, social housing is now a by-product of market housing. Some 48 per cent, of the Housing Corporation's programme of affordable homes is being delivered through section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, on the back of market-led housing. As a result, it is dependent to some extent on a buoyant housing market.
	Let me deal with that point first. On a typical new-build site, where a private developer is building market homes, 25 or 30 per cent. of them have to be affordable. That form of provision has many advantages: it provides mixed developments rather than the polarised ones that we had in the 1960s and 1970s, and it also saves the taxpayer a lot of money because the cost of providing social housing is, in effect, borne by the land owner, who makes slightly less of a windfall gain. Using the planning system to generate affordable homes is an enlightened policy—introduced, by the way, by the previous Conservative Government—that has enabled many people to access decent homes far more quickly than would have happened under the old system.
	However, that use of the planning system also has a downside. Far from being insulated against the broader housing market, social housing is now, crucially, dependent on it. My concern is that the softening of the broader housing market will mean that the target of 3 million new homes, and the social housing component of that target, will not be achieved. If one looks at the annual reports and the share prices of the country's major house builders, and at the comments of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, one finds that the outlook for housing is not good. That means that the outlook for social housing is not good either.
	That brings me to the second factor: the reliance by housing associations on private finance to top up the Government grants that they get to deliver the housing programme. The National Housing Federation—the housing associations' trade body—is aware of the considerable challenges faced by housing associations in the current financial climate. Between now and 2011, housing associations will have to borrow £16 billion of private finance to provide 155,000 new affordable homes. That is on top of the £8 billion of grant. I do not want to be over-dramatic about that, as housing associations are well run, regulated bodies that remain attractive prospects for lenders who want to retreat to quality investment. While there is no sign of lending supply drying up, some lenders are withdrawing from the housing association market and the cost of borrowing is rising.
	As a result of the credit crunch there is more competition for finance. Lenders report that they are becoming much more selective, and it is inevitable that individual housing associations—especially those with less attractive risk profiles—will find it difficult to raise the money to sustain the build programme. The Council of Mortgage Lenders has warned the Housing Corporation not to push associations to build "at all costs" amid growing uncertainty in financial markets. Andrew Heywood, deputy head of policy at the CML, has said that, in the short to medium term, there is "no certainty" about the lending capacity of the banks. He added:
	"In this situation it would be important for the Housing Corporation to remember its fundamental role as an independent regulator primarily concerned with the viability of housing associations, rather than with attainment of external development targets at all costs."
	In response, the Housing Corporation said:
	"We are keeping the position of individual associations under close review to ensure that services to existing tenants are not put at risk from development activity."
	Several housing associations have been told by lenders, after deals were agreed in broad outline, that the price of the borrowing would go up. Signs that the property market has peaked will make it more difficult for those housing associations that top up their building programme by selling houses to maintain momentum.
	This morning, I contacted one of the larger housing associations in my constituency to get a report from the front on how those broader problems are having an impact. I was told that all the funders were being very cautious, with some having stopped lending while others were looking at selling on their mortgage books, or were putting up margins by varying degrees. As a result, the biggest problem would be for housing associations that would be looking to raise more money because their facilities needed reviewing or increasing. The conclusion reached by the housing association that I contacted was that, if the crisis goes on much longer, it will start to impact on the sector's ability to purchase sites and property from the private sector.
	My point is that it is not just the private housing sector that is affected. The social housing sector is also affected. If the Government want to hit their 3 million target, they may have to act to maintain their social housing programme. They do not have much headroom on the public finance side, and we have not yet reached the stage where dramatic action is needed, but it would be prudent for Housing Ministers and the Treasury to have some contingency measures up their sleeves. Such measures may be needed to maintain the momentum in the housing programme and if we are to hit the housing target, which is something that I am sure that we all want to happen.

Lembit �pik: I was very interested in the earlier contribution from the Minister. I like her; she did a good job in Northern Ireland as I guided her towards securing peace there. That is no more of a claim to power than what has been foisted on us from both sides of the House this afternoon, but all the negativity that the right hon. Lady showed makes it clear that she seems to have a real downer for the Liberal Democrats.
	The Minister has nothing to fear from the contributions made by me and others this afternoon, as we are trying to offer insights and, I hope, some sage counsel. Any self-respecting Government should take such offerings seriously, regardless of their source. Getting help and support from us is nothing to be embarrassed about, and it should not be shunned. Indeed, the Minister should be proud that we are offering the advice for nothing. If she were to meet Liberal Democrats socially, I am confident that she would quite like us. The crucial point is that the observations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) are right, regardless of party position, because they are based on the facts of the current economic situation.
	The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins), who had to go to another event, to some extent underlined the power that we Liberal Democrats have by suggesting that my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham was single-handedly responsible for the collapse and withdrawal of the Together mortgage scheme. That is power indeed. Perhaps most interesting of all was the way in which the Minister, who sadly is not in the Chamber at the moment, likened my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham to Private Frazer in Dad's Army. She suggested that he was effectively saying, We're all doomed. To take up that analogy, she surely takes on the role of Corporal Jones by suggesting that we should not panic.
	I cannot resist suggesting that the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) has taken on a Vicky Pollard role, as his party's position this afternoon is Yeah, but no, but yeah; I still have not got a clue whether the Conservatives will vote with the Liberal Democrats or support the Labour party. That is a bit of intrigue and excitement to look forward to. On the subject of the Conservative position, I must correct something that he said about my choice of leadership candidate. He is right that I had a bit of a bad run of supporting unsuccessful leadership candidates, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) is so good that I backed him and he still won.  [Interruption.] I am willing to give way the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns); I did not hear what he said from a sedentary position, but I am sure that it was very entertaining. Perhaps he should quit while he is ahead on that one.
	The hon. Member for Fareham went on to claim that my words are so powerful that the very utterance of the phrase brink of repossession catastrophe will cause such a catastrophe to happen. If that is the case, I must be more cautious about my predictions that we will be hit by an asteroid. In practice, the prediction is not the same as the event. The purpose of the Liberal Democrats calling for today's debate was to try to avert a repossession catastrophe by trying to get the Government to take a cross-party attitude, rather than a partisan bunker mentality, towards a problem that is obviously coming our way. Perhaps that was optimistic of us, in light of some of the comments made today.
	I was interested in hearing what the Conservative position was, butI do not mean this in a rude way; it is just an observationit seems that the Conservatives have a series of bits-and-pieces ideas, but no clear philosophical narrative to their housing and economic policies. That is the case in other policy areas, too. They can tell us what they do not like, but I have no idea what economic policy on repossessions in the housing market would be if the Conservatives were in charge. Perhaps we will hear that narrative in the summating speech of the hon. Member for Fareham, which will immediately follow mine, but I fear that we have not heard that narrative because there is not one. I shall reserve judgment until we hear what the hon. Gentleman says in about 10 minutes' time.
	The hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) spoke in an erudite, insightful way, as ever. He berated us for talking about the risk of recession, but what kind of debate will this be if we are censored, and prevented from discussing the real and present danger of a recession in this country? I have some disturbing statistics from my constituency. Between 2006 and 2007, average wages in my constituency went down, for the first time in years, by 4 per cent. That is not even a real-terms decrease; it is an absolute decline. The constituency of Montgomeryshire is therefore already displaying signs of recession. We ignore such statistics at our peril. If we take the mature attitude that my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham has consistently taken in debates on the economy, we will collectively consider the issues and move forward.
	Repossessions are rife and are on the up. They, among other leading indicators that we discussed, are harbingers of the doom that we were accused of spreading. Each of us has specific examples from our constituencies, where repossessions and problems with finding housing are arising all the time.

Julia Goldsworthy: I have two examples from my constituency that may inform my hon. Friend's further comments. First, the local Citizens Advice branch informs me that it is concerned about the number of people who turn up in court for repossession hearings having not sought any advice at all. Does that not underline how important it is that advice is made available when people first experience difficulties? Secondly, it is not just mortgage lenders who are serving repossession notices. Some councils are now serving repossession orders for arrears of council tax. That is of great concern. There are pressures from all sides putting people's homes under threat.

Lembit �pik: My hon. Friend illustrates the precise problem. This is not a theoretical debate about what might happen, but a practical debate about what is happening. When councils act in the way that she describes, and when individuals face the desolation of homelessness, we have to take ideas seriously. I ask the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury to offer us a crumb of hope when she sums up, by saying that the Government will consider the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Twickenham and for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy), and by me. I hope that the Government will be willing to work on those ideas on a cross-party basis.
	It is implicitly acceptedI shall now say it explicitlythat the problem is not necessarily that loans were given in an inappropriate way in the past. The debt crisis arose because loans were given at a time when the economic circumstances were more stable and promising. Now that we find ourselves in a more precarious position, some loans that previously looked reliable look rather less reliable. The Government cannot be blamed for all the changes in economic circumstances, but they are responsible for responding now, at an early stage, when we can still prevent repossessionsthe number of which is relatively small, given the total number of householdersfrom becoming a big macro-economic problem due to the decelerator effect that a change in fortunes often heralds.
	About 7.5 trillion-worth of real estate is in the British public's possession, but the fact that debt is coming up to 1.4 trillion is a concern, due to the sheer size of the debt and the difficulty in managing it. The British people now pay 1 million of debt interest every nine minutes. That is one reason why interest rates are so important, and have such a powerful effect on the general fortunes of our country. So what can we do about it? Well, my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenhamor, as I like to call him, the next Chancellor of the Exchequerhas put forward a cohesive strategic package that we look forward to implementing, but the country cannot afford to wait two years for that. The Minister is perfectly welcome to plagiarise our ideas; what we are talking about is a strategic narrative, to use that word again, that brings us out of the danger of massive numbers of repossessions being made, with the knock-on effect that that would have on recession.
	The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) made a very good point about house building and changing circumstances. We can consider other tools in addition to house building, such as shared ownership schemes, modular constructionthat can bring down the cost of high-quality housingrestoration and the release of about 1 million homes that are lying vacant for various reasons that include financial or planning restrictions. That would immediately increase supply and deal with fixed demand, which is hard to alter.
	So we have a basket of opportunities before us, which we can implement; not all of them cost a great deal of money, and some require only creativity, but it is important that we do that now, because we will not alter the demand for housing. We can alter the supply and therefore take some heat and pressure out of the system, reducing the risk of a crash as the market readjusts.
	I would say in parenthesisthis is not directly related to what we are discussing todaythat I hope that the Government revisit their home information pack policy. The HIP scheme does not seem to be delivering anything particularly useful to householders and, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne), it is time for a HIP replacement. I hope we get that sometime soon. The evidence that we have seen from the Government's own surveys shows little faith in the HIP process among purchasers and, indeed, vendors of houses.

Lembit �pik: Individuals such as the one my hon. Friend quotes are not politicians; they are real people who are looking for real solutions. To that extent, I hope that the Government accept the circumstantial and anecdotal evidence, which adds up to a clear mood music that this country is experiencing frustrations with some of the laudable proposals made by the Government. I understand that, so far, only 700 individuals have been assisted by the 100 million first-time buyers scheme, so while some of those schemes have potential, they are not realising it yet.
	I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton for his HIP replacement joke, which I shall not use again, and conclude with these thoughts. Liberal Democrats, like members of any party, like to compete with the Government and spar for advantage. It is perfectly legitimate for us to make party political points. Indeed, I was quite impressed with the Minister when I saw that normally mild mannered and gentle lady turn into a ferocious tiger at the merest scent of a Liberal Democrat Focus deliverer. But this issue is too important for that. If we get it wrong, we all lose.
	Whatever the Minister says here in the Chamber, I hope that the Government are listening privately to the sage and considered advice from my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham and others on the Liberal Democrat Benches who are more concerned with averting a housing catastrophe than with winning short-term points off the Government. The Minister, if she is listening, will accept that we raise those issues with good intentions and in good faith, and we hope that the dialogue can proceed in that way on a cross-party basis.
	Ignoring the warnings is the psychology of denial. The path thereof can spell disaster. Accepting the dangers rationally and working together to do something about them may yet avert a repossession catastrophe and prevent some social damage that goes beyond words but which it is in our power to prevent.

Jeremy Browne: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak at the conclusion of this important and timely debate. The context of our discussion is a Government who have lost a degree of control and ability to self-analyse with regard to economic policy and who are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) has just said, in a state of denial. It was truly bizarre to hear the Financial Secretary to the Treasuryat a time of global credit crunch and when the country is on heightened economic alerttalking about the good old days when Derek Hatton ran Liverpool city council. Surely even Labour Members must regard that as a truly incredible reaction to the circumstances that we face.
	It is worth going through in turn the bald statistics on the current state of the British economy. Personal debt stands at 1.4 trillion. House prices are more than nine times average earnings, compared with five times at the start of the last housing crash back in 1990. As my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) said, house prices have fallen for five consecutive months. Real inflation for real people is far in excess of the official Government figure.
	It is also worth pausing to consider the tale of the two Opposition parties and two very different approaches to what is a state of national alert. One tale is that of the Conservative party, whose future policies are as embarrassing as its past failures. Furthermore, it is worth looking back to the grim statisticsthe record of the Conservative party in governmentin case we forget quite how catastrophic its stewardship was of the British economy.
	Between 1990 and 1997, 420,000 families had their homes repossessed. Between 1990 and 1995, house prices fell by 14.5 per cent., on average. Average interest rates when the Conservatives were last in office were around 11 per cent. and at one point reached 15 per cent. The average rate of inflation when the Conservatives were in power was 5.8 per cent. That is a truly embarrassing and appalling record and I am not surprised that they do not wish to dwell on it.
	What about the Conservative party today? Its position, as I understand it, was summarised by the leader of the party, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), in his Budget response on 12 March, when he said in the House that
	in the years of plenty, Labour Governments put nothing aside. They did not fix the roof when the sun was shining. . . in good years you put aside money for the bad years.[ Official Report, 12 March 2008; Vol. 473, c. 300-301.]
	That point was made by the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) during his contribution to this debate, but it is not what the Conservative party was saying during those so-called good years, seven or eight years ago.
	When he was the shadow Chancellor, Michael Portillo, speaking at a Conservative conference on 3 October 2000, argued for more funding and tax cuts. This is what he told the conference in the good years:
	We will cut taxes on business, so that they can compete and create prosperity and jobs. We will reform Labour's taxes on entrepreneurs and on inward investment. . .We will help pensioners and hard-working families. We will restore a married couple's allowance. We will cut the duty on fuel. That gives you a flavour of my budgets.
	That fiscal incontinence was not a one-off. At a repeat event, Michael Portillo as shadow Chancellor speaking at the next Conservative conference on 1 March 2001again, in the good years that we hear so much about from the Conservative Front-Bench teamsaid:
	Analysts believe the Chancellor has about 5 billion more than he thought. It is perfectly possible to cut the fuel tax this year without any impact on government spending or public services. Everyone knows that Gordon Brown has a war chest.
	In other words, he wanted lower taxes and higher spending.
	The truth is that the Conservatives now have just two economic policies. The first policy is to criticise the Labour party for taxing and spending too much. The second policy is to tax and spend exactly the same as the Labour party is suggesting. The Conservative shadow Chancellor told BBC Breakfast news on 3 September 2007:
	The Conservatives will spend the same as Labourif there is a Conservative government there will be real increases in spending.
	I urge the House not to believe too readily the Conservative analysis and their changing tale about the economic circumstances in this country.
	The Conservative shadow Chancellor started his time in office back in 2005 by making a trip to Estonia to see how he could introduce a flat-rate tax in Britain. He is now instructing his shadow Chief Secretary not to bring forward any proposals for Conservative tax cuts until 2015. It is no wonder that on 15 February the online version of  The Spectator, a journal generally sympathetic to the Conservative party, commented:
	The Conservative leadership attacks Gordon Brown for being a ditherer and ordering endless reviews to put off making decisions. But the Tories are not averse to such delaying tactics themselves. The Conservatives' policy on taxation in recent years feels like one colossal dither.
	I agree with that assessment. The shadow Chancellor and the Conservative party have no policies on the credit crunch, Northern Rock or tax.
	The other Opposition party, the Liberal Democrats, by contrast, have led the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham is too modest to say so himself, so I will quote on his behalf what he told the House on 13 November 2003almost five years ago, before I was elected. It is worth Members listening to this. My hon. Friend said:
	On the housing market, is not the brutal truth that with investment, exports and manufacturing output stagnating or falling, the growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level?
	It is amazing that someone could have made that speech in the House five years ago and that the Government paid so little heed to it. In response to my hon. Friend, the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, said:
	The hon. Gentleman has been writing articles in the newspapers, as reflected in his contribution, that spread alarm, without substance, about the state of the British economy.[ Official Report, 13 November 2003; Vol. 413, c. 398.]
	No wonder the Prime Minister has acquired a reputation for complacency and dithering.
	In an interview in  The Independent on Monday this week, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), the former Home Secretary, was asked:
	What has been Gordon Brown's biggest mistake since taking over as Prime Minister?
	The right hon. Gentleman's answer was:
	Allowing a sense of indecision to develop.
	For understatement, that almost matches the first line of the recent annual report from our most high-profile financial institution:
	2007 was a difficult and challenging year for Northern Rock.
	Members who are in government at the moment are equally critical. The Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), quoted in  Progress, described the attitude of the British public. He said:
	at a time of growing insecurity their anger
	that is, the British public's anger
	is ignited when they feel the government is losing touch with what fairness means to the mainstream majority who work hard, play by the rules and are feeling squeezed by rising utility bills, the cost of petrol and rising council tax.
	According to  The Mail on Sunday, the solution to that problem has been identified at No. 10: the Prime Minister is to try a new speechwriter. The newspaper ran an article in which an insider at No. 10 is quoted at length, saying that the Prime Minister's
	 'cluttered' way of delivering the Government's messages, the lack of 'personality' in his speeches and the 'stilted language that he tends to use' 
	were among the problems stopping the Government from getting over their apparently entirely positive record. The helpful, loyal source went on to say that what was needed were a few good jokes. We have been listening to Labour Members this afternoon and when it comes to a few good jokes, they were pretty goodalthough not in the way they meant to be.
	Indeed, the Financial Secretary came up with this solution to the current problems in the housing market: better primary school education so that people can do their sums. As the average first-time buyer buys a house in their mid-30s, that sounds an excellent way of starting to address housing problems 30 years from now. However, it may not be an immediate solution.
	The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins) appeared to blame all the country's economic woes on the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham. If it is that simple to stop the Government's economic problems, I am sure that, as an act of charity, my hon. Friend will make fewer speeches.

Jeremy Browne: I agree with that excellent intervention. I regret that Members of the Labour and Conservative parties do not recognise its importance. The salient point is surely this: it is woeful for a Government Minister to say that the Government are putting in place measures to deal with today's housing problem and, when asked what they are, to reply, We have a programme for better education in primary schools so that the children can add up better when they take out a mortgage in future. Can the Government do no better than that? It is no wonder the Blairite spin doctor Phil Collins, whom No. 10 begged to rescue its drifting ship of state, is reported to have said:
	Brown doesn't need a speechwriter. He needs a magician.
	The Prime Minister certainly needs the hard-headed, practical policies that address the current malaise and were outlined and proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham at the start of this debate. I will dwell on three key points that he made.
	First, we must stop mass repossessions and fire sales of property. Before repossessions, banks must have offered free financial advice and explored all other alternatives, such as renegotiating the terms of the loan and offering shared-equity schemes. Secondly, we must change the Monetary Policy Committee's mandate so that house prices are taken into account when setting interest rates, which would be more flexible and responsive and enable the Bank to damp down housing booms. Thirdly, we must have better regulation. We need to come to terms with the fact that the Financial Services Authority has been found wanting and that banking regulation should include active, counter-cyclical management of bank reserves to prevent future cycles of excessive lending and contraction. Those are positive and responsible suggestions.
	Instead, we have a Government with their head in the sand. The disaster at Heathrow airport provides a perfect metaphor for this Administrationhuge budgets, inflated expectations, management incompetence, communications ineptitude, public anger and a state of total denial. This is a terminal 5 Government who are in terminal decline.

Angela Eagle: The answer is to ensure that supply matches demand more carefully. There have been increases in house formation and a need, as the Government announced and for which they provided finance, to build more houses. That will assist the ratio.
	I do not accept the Liberal Democrats' comparison of today's economy with the 1990s. They can talk our economy down as much as they likethey have been at it todaybut it is forecast to grow this year, next year and in future. That is an inconvenient truth, but we should put it on the record.
	The second main charge is that personal debt is too high. It is true that it has risen, but so have total household assets, against which the debt is secured. They stand at 7.5 trillion. Household balances remain strong and net household wealth has increased by 72 per cent. in real terms since 1997.
	Of course, consumers need to be able to make the right financial decisions when they take out debt, be it in mortgages or in other forms. The Government are helping with that through our work on financial capability. With the Financial Services Authority, we have agreed to provide 12 million to run a pathfinder project in the next two years, following Otto Thoresen's recommendations on financial capability. That will test the best ways in which to ensure that everyone in the country can get free, impartial and high-quality advice on their money when they need it. Advice is also available for people who get into difficulty, and our financial inclusion fund is helping to ensure that that is available to those who need it.
	Let me deal with the Liberal Democrats' third point on the housing market and repossessions. It is hard to take Liberal Democrat forecasts on the housing market seriously since they have been predicting a crash for most of the past 10 years. Regardless of the objective conditions in the economy, they trade on gloom and fear and predict a collapse. They were at it again today. I suppose they think that, if they keep saying it for long enough, one of these days it might turn out to be true, a little like the stopped clock, which tends to be right twice a day.
	What do the facts tell us? The Liberal Democrats drew comparisons with the 1990s, but they are easily dismissed. House price inflation is declining relatively gradually and house prices are still higher than they were a year ago. Our expectation, as set out in the Budget, is for sluggish or flat house price growth this year. The Liberal Democrats do no one favours by scaremongering about 25 per cent. falls.
	There were high numbers of repossessions in the early 1990s, but the picture is different today. Last year, despite 2 million extra mortgages and 1.8 million more home owners, less than half as many repossessions happened as took place in 1991 or 1992. The Liberal Democrats were at it again on the Treasury Committee, when they questioned Bank of England chief economist, Charlie Bean, about the so-called housing crash. He told the Committee last Wednesday that repossessions are still at low levels and that special measures were simply not called for at this juncture. The Government would be ready to consider special measures if, objectively, they were required. Currently, they are not.
	The hon. Member for Taunton said that the Conservative party did not have any policies. He was being a bit cruel; they have a couple of policies and I want to spend a little time on mortgage regulation. The Conservatives issued a document not long ago called, Freeing Britain to Compete: Equipping the UK for Globalisation. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) was in charge of the document, which I shall quote. He said:
	We see no need to continue to regulate the provision of mortgage finance, as it is the lending institutions rather than the client taking the risk.
	Tory party policy only a couple of months ago was to deregulate mortgage finance provision to prepare us for globalisation. I cannot think of a more ridiculous, pathetic and dangerous policy than the one that the Conservatives developed and were trumpeting, until the beginning of the credit crunch taught them that perhaps regulation of mortgages is a good thing.
	Britain's economy is in a far stronger position than it was. Personal debt is far lower than the amount of household assets and support is in place for those who get into difficulty. The signs are that house price inflation is declining relatively gradually and the number of repossessions is small. That does not mean that we are complacent. We will be keeping a close eye on how things go and will stand ready to act if the situation should deteriorate.

David Wilshire: The hon. Gentleman has admitted that one bit of his motion is a load of rubbish. Will he tell us which other bits are also a load of rubbish?

Norman Baker: I note the unholy alliance between the right hon. Gentleman and the Government Front Benchers, who agreed on that point. That is part of the problem. Of course we want improvements in aircraft design and want to limit emissions per aircraft if we can do so. However, providing extra capacity generates more flights. That is the point the right hon. Gentleman refuses to accept. The flights generated will partly be short-haul flights, the need for which could be met by long-distance, high-speed rail. The right hon. Gentleman, who does not like railways, refuses to acknowledge that point.
	The right hon. Gentleman also refuses to acknowledge the serious impact of climate change, which nobody has so far mentioned. The impact of aviation on climate change is quite clear. It contributes about 6 per cent. of the UK's carbon emissions, compared with 24 per cent. from road traffic, but since 1990 the proportion of carbon emissions from aviation has more than doubled. Emissions from air travel are due to rise by 83 per cent. from 2002 levels by 2020, and could amount to a quarter of the UK's total contribution to climate change by 2038. How does that significant increase in carbon emissions from aviation square with the Government's stated policy of securing a 60 per cent. cut in carbon emissions by 2050? Why is aviation exempt from that target?

Norman Baker: I will not, because I have given way on eight or nine occasions and I am six minutes into the debate.
	Let us consider the other impacts of the third runway, apart from the impact on climate change. The Government admit that air pollution levels at Heathrow will exceed the EU legal limits if a third runway is built. They have had to get BAA to try to massage the figures in order to find a way of getting round that problem.
	There are particular issues in relation to road transport. The Department for Transport estimated in a parliamentary answer I received the other day that a third runway at Heathrow would create an extra 1.2 million journeys on the underground, 2.3 million journeys on heavy rail and 10.2 million journeys by car and taxi. The assumptions made in the Adding capacity at Heathrow documenta loaded title if ever I heard oneare simply not credible. It estimates that the public transport annual mode share will increase from 36.2 per cent. in 2004 to 41.7 per cent. in 2030, more than doubling the number of passengers. Where will that capacity on public transport come from? There are no plans to provide it in the Government's expansion plans.

Norman Baker: That point is very relevant, and of course the Conservative party has not committed itself to that project, even if it did have the beneficial effects to which the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) referred.
	There is also a problem with air pollution. The 2003 aviation White Paper stated that air quality levels must remain consistently within EU limits coming into effect in 2010. Of course, that would represent an improvement in air quality in residential areas compared with what obtains today.
	How is it possible for that target to be met, if the Government are anticipating yet another expansion of Heathrow? It seems to me incredible that the Government can imagine that more flights, runways and terminals will lead to less pollution, lower emissions and fewer environmental problems. However, that almost seems to be what the Government's consultation document claims.
	Another problem is the impact on the local area. If plans for a third runway were to go ahead, BAA has estimated that at least 700 homes in the area would have to be demolished, affecting some 1,600 people. In addition, the village of Sipson would disappear off the map by 2020, and many ancient buildings would be destroyed. Residents at Harlington and Harmondsworth would be evicted, and thousands more would be seriously hit by the increase in noise and air pollution. Other villages such as Hanford and Longford would also be affected.

Norman Baker: I am grateful for that intervention, and for the hon. Gentleman sharing his knowledge on the matter.
	I deal now with noise pollution in particular. There is no doubt that the expansion of Heathrow will result in extra noise pollution for local residents. The key figure quoted by the Government is 57 dB, as that is the level at which community annoyance sets in. BAA has estimated that more than 250,000 people now live inside the 57 dB contour. They are therefore affected already, but the proposed expansion will make the problem much worse.
	In fact, the problem is even more serious, as the World Health Organisation has challenged the Government's view on noise thresholds. It has argued that 50 dB is the appropriate level for determining annoyance, and that 55 dB constitutes serious annoyance. Therefore, even according to the BAA figures, it is clear that all the people in the immediate area are experiencing serious annoyance, according to the WHO definition.
	In November 2007 the Government published a study entitled Attitudes to Noise from Aviation Sources in England, and Ministers will know that it reinforces the WHO's argument very strongly. Although there are only 250,000 residents in Heathrow's 57 dB area, another 2 million people live within the 50 dB area. Adding those figures together gives us the total number of people the WHO believe are being affected by noise pollution at the present time, so what will the total be if the planned expansion goes ahead?
	The Government said that they would not go ahead with Heathrow expansion if the number of people living in the 57 dB area increased. How will the Government square having a third runway with that pledge on noise? We have heard nothing about that.
	In addition, the new flight path will pass over such places as Heston, Chiswick, north Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea, Langley, Slough and Maidenhead. A total of 150,000 people live in those areas, but do the Government believe that they do not count?
	On top of all that, Heathrow expansion would have significant impacts on health. The 1999 study into public health impacts at large airports that was carried out for the Dutch Government found evidence to suggest that exposure to the sort of air pollution levels observed within an airport's operations systemand in that sense Heathrow is the largest airport in the worldwas linked to higher mortality rates, and to more frequent hospital admissions as a result of the aggravation of respiratory and cardiovascular problems. The study also found that air pollution was linked to decreased lung function, and an increase in chronic respiratory conditions. What assessment have the Government made of the current health implications for people who live near Heathrow, and what assessment have they made, seriously, of the implications if a third runway is given the go-ahead?

Norman Baker: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention; he makes an important point. Of course, because we are expanding Heathrow incrementally and constantly, the expansion will come up against existing settlements. Some will be demolished, but others will be left very close indeed to runways. That is worrying and needs to be considered.
	Another safety issue is the question of how much traffic we can accommodate in the skies around Heathrow and over London. Will we have a system of stacking, which is environmentally unsustainable and churns out huge amounts of carbon emissions for no benefit? It is also suggested that stacking will result in a greater number of planes attempting to land at Heathrow than air traffic control can deal with. At the last Transport Question Time I put that point to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), who is responsible for aviation, and who is present today. I quoted to him a report in  The Sunday Times that said that NATS and the CAA were of the view that there was insufficient airspace to accommodate the scale of predicted traffic growth, according to current predictive technology. In his response, the Minister said:
	The CAA has examined our White Paper proposals and believes that the necessary airspace capacity can be provided safely.[ Official Report, 4 March 2008; Vol. 472, c. 20.]
	I wrote to NATS, because I am a suspicious sort of person, and I got a letter back from it only yesterday. It is from the corporate and technical centre, so I suppose that the writers of the letter know what they are about. It says:
	NATS has not yet carried out detailed work as there has been no requirement for us to do so. We are not therefore able to advise at this stage on any specific airspace changes that may be required in support of any change in Government policy to permit expansion at Heathrow.
	NATS has not carried out detailed work, and it has not been asked to carry out detailed work. How does that square with the assurance that the Minister gave me in Transport questions? More to the point, why has it not been asked to carry out that work? I should have thought that that was one of the first things that the Government ought to do.
	Let us move on to the economic case. If there are all those environmental downsides to Heathrow, which there undoubtedly are; if there are concerns about health, which there are; and if there are concerns about safety, which there are, what are the overriding benefits that suggest that we should go ahead with the proposal? The Government keep saying that it is terribly important for Britain's economy, so it seems that in the equation they have set out for themselves we have the economic benefits on one side and virtually everything else on the other. Are those economic benefits so strong and so enormous that they outweigh all the disbenefits that I and many others have identified in the last weeks and months?
	A couple of days ago, the Aviation Minister dealt with the urgent question on terminal 5 and told the House that
	the expansion of Heathrow is of fundamental importance to the economy of the United Kingdom. We believe that we have demonstrated that. It must take place and we have demonstrated how it can take place with the environmental protections that we have laid down...We are confident that, when we analyse the consultation...and publish our findings in the summer, our validation will be proved to be correct.[ Official Report, 31 March 2008; Vol. 474, c. 434.]
	That does not suggest that there is much of a consultation exercise going on, as the Government have already concluded that they will be proved right.

Norman Baker: I am not giving way to the hon. Gentleman again in this debate. I am sorry, but I have already given way to him two or three times.
	It very much suits BA to move passengers into Heathrow and then move them out again. It suits BAA for that to occur, because it means that those people can stay at Heathrow and use BAA's shops, spending lots of money. It does not much suit passengers, who would benefit from more direct flights. Nor does it suit the environment to have two flights instead of one. Does the Government's consultation paper consider whether there is a prospect of moving flights from Heathrow to other UK airports, which would obviate the need for a third runway?

Norman Baker: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and what he refers to is a fault of the current system. We could eliminate some carbon emissions if we had better planning of flight arrivals. Trains do not all arrive at Victoria at the same time and have to wait outside the station for a platform to become vacant. There is a timetable, which brings those trains in at the appropriate time. That works most of the time at least. It ought to be possible for NATS to introduce a better system to avoid stacking. I am disappointed that the Government have not progressed that satisfactorily. If there are so many downsides to Heathrow environmentally, on health grounds and economically, what is the Government's amendment about? What is their consultation paper about? What is the motivation behind what they are trying to achieve? One must look carefully at the links between BAA and the Government to try to find some rationale for the position that the Government have adopted.
	People in London particularly have been badly served by the consultation process that has taken place so far. The Minister will know that the consultation form, which was eight pages long, was widely regarded as full of jargon and technical language and difficult for the average person to understand, so already people were excluded from the consultation process. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) reported the consultation process to the Plain English Campaign, which described it as atrocious and stated that
	no ordinary person with an interest in the plans could be expected to read and understand this.
	BAA had a significant role in the consultation document. I notice that it even has the copyright for the photograph on the cover. The Government came out in favour of a third runway in 2003. They insisted that strict environmental targets should be met on air and noise pollution. That was a sensible policy, but what happened?
	We found out from an article that was published recently in  The Sunday Times that a senior civil servant, David Gray, was tasked with showing how the runway could be built without negative impacts, and showed that an additional runway would mean a lot more air pollution. How could that be avoided? That was his task. He was not tasked with receiving the data and producing a neutral report; he was tasked with fiddling the data and producing a report that was skewed towards BAA and produced the right result at the end.
	I congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) on her freedom of information request, which showed that the unsatisfactory initial results led to executives from BAA being given unrivalled access to Whitehall and confidential data so that they could select alternative input data for environmental predictions until they got the right results. That is a disgrace and it shows that the Government concluded in the consultation paper that a new airport the size of Gatwick, effectively, could be bolted on to Heathrow as a new runway without any adverse environmental impact. It is astonishing that they could have reached that conclusion.
	We know from BAA that it now has as its director of public affairs Tom Kelly, Tony Blair's former Downing street spokesman, who famously called Dr. David Kelly a Walter Mitty character. It is perhaps Tom Kelly who is a Walter Mitty character living a fantasy life where there is no pollution from aircraft, where clean cars exist so there is no impact from the road movements to Heathrow, and where international flights can be discounted in the calculations of the air pollution that will result from any third runway.
	Even the Government's advisory body, the Environment Agency, has unpicked the Department for Transport document and concluded that it is not sufficiently robust to support the construction of a third runway. It states:
	There are arguments for postponing irreversible investment decisions in the face of uncertainty.
	I have not heard that uncertainty from the Government or from BAA. They appear to be quite certain that the environmental impact will be negative. They seem to dismiss concerns about health. They appear, however, to be sure that the economic benefits will be substantial. Is it not curious that the position that they have adopted is very similar to that adopted by BAA?
	We know from BAA's previous predictions that they are unreliable. In the mid-1990s, BAA predicted that smaller aircraft would disappear, and when it lobbied for terminal 5, it said that there would be 453,000 flights at Heathrow by 2013. That is what BAA said in 1995. That figure was reached by July 2000. What it predicted would take 18 years took only five years.
	Can the Minister answer one specific question? Why was it thought appropriate to exclude international flight arrivals from any calculation of the environmental impact arising from the third runway?
	There is a revolving door between the Government and BAA; not only Tom Kelly is involved. Joe Irvin was a special adviser at Downing street and went on to become a director of public affairs at BAA. Another former BAA public affairs director is Stephen Hardwick, a former policy adviser to the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), the former Deputy Prime Minister. That new revolving door syndrome is a new version of Labour spin that goes round and round between BAA and the Government.

Norman Baker: It is perfectly proper for any institution in this country to seek investment, and it is appropriate then for a consultation exercise to be undertaken. It is perfectly normal for large corporations, bodies, pressure groups or others to engage with the Government at the appropriate juncture; there is nothing wrong in that.
	What is wrong about this issue is that a line has been crossed because BAA has been involved in writing the consultation paper. It has not simply provided facts and figures, as it maintainsthe memos that the hon. Member for Putney helped to secure show that it went much further than that. They show that BAA was helpfully redrafting and suggesting to the Government how particular information could be eliminated and how particular environmental outcomes could be redrafted. It was sending memos to that effect to the Government.
	That worries me, because the Department for Transport appears to be subject to regulatory capture by BAA. That should worry the hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas); she is getting a response not from her Government, but from BAA. BAA is perfectly within its rights to lobby and make its case, but not to take over the aviation policy of the Department for Transport, although it appears to have done that to a large degree in respect of Heathrow.

Norman Baker: Is the right hon. Lady aware that flights between Paris and Brussels have been eliminated as a consequence of high-speed rail, as have many other flights in mainland Europe? How can aviation and road capacity be expanding in this country, but railways constrained within the existing lines?

Ruth Kelly: We have not gone against DEFRA's guidelines at all. In fact, terminal 5 will be one of the greenest airport buildings in the world. It would be ludicrousthe hon. Member for Lewes asked me to respond to this pointto include both flights leaving London and flights arriving there for the purposes of a trading scheme, as it would be double-counting the impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

Alan Keen: I shall be as brief as possible, although even eight minutes would not have been enough for me to make a proper argument about the important issues that we face.
	The Secretary of State said that I was passionate about Heathrow airport and air transport. I used to be very proud of Heathrow, and in fact it is 45 years ago this week since I first started work only a few miles away from the airport. I have lived and worked within six miles of it ever since, and I understand the air transport industry very well. More than anything else, however, I am passionate about my constituents who suffer from the noise. Improvements to aircraft engines may lead to greater quietness, but that is irrelevant: unless engines become completely silent and planes are able to take off and land vertically, many thousands of people in west London will still be affected to their detriment.
	I shall put forward a very simple argument on behalf of my constituents, but if I get time I shall also read out some of the comments that I have received from them. I shall then leave it to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to stop me.
	If I seem a bit shaken, it is because a note from my office was passed to me a few minutes ago. The note said that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen)who has campaigned against a third runway for five yearswould be unable to attend the debate because she was on a maternity visit. I only hope that she is making the visit in her capacity as a Health Minister. If that is not the case, I hope that the House will wish me welland that it is a girl.  [ Laughter. ] She will kill me later.
	In the short time available to me, I shall concentrate on the two main problems facing my constituents. The first is the Cranford agreement; the consultation asked whether people wanted it to be scrapped. The agreement has existed since the 1950s. It has never been written down, but it ensures that planes always take off from the southern runway when the wind is blowing from the east. The agreement does not suit everyone, but it means that people in the villagewhich is very close to the airport fencedo not have to suffer the dreadful roar of engines when a plane takes off. If the agreement were done away with, life for the people in Cranford ward would be absolutely unbearable. We would have to give them money to movean awful lot of money.
	If the continued expansion of Heathrow is so desperately important for Britain's economy, where would a fourth runway go? I can tell the Secretary of State that no such proposal is going to work. If we are to expand the air transport industry, we will have to look for a site for a new airport, where the noise will not affect people. The industry is very short of sensible, long-term planning, and we cannot trust the people who lead it. They lied during the terminal 5 inquiry, as has been noted in the debate already. I previously always supported expansion at Heathrow. I supported terminal 5 because we needed extra capacity in Heathrow. It is relevant to note that three Members of Parliament who previously supported expansionmy hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth, John Wilkinson who was a previous Member for Ruislip-Northwood, and Ichanged our minds. It is significant that people who always supported expansion changed their minds when it came to expanding outside the present boundaries, and I support my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). It is a desperate situation.
	To return to my constituents, I have mentioned the Cranford agreement, which prevents planes from taking off on the northern runway when the wind is from the east, as the noise is then absolutely unbearable. For 13 years, I worked under the flight path half a mile from the touchdown point on the southern runwayhalf a mile from where a plane crash landed a few weeks ago. The mixed mode is absolutely unacceptable; I could read quotes from constituents who say that they cannot enjoy their gardens at all when planes are landing or taking off. That problem extends a long wayto Richmond Park and even further east. If mixed mode comes in, it will be the end of runway alternation. I do not need to explain that to people on the Liberal Democrat Benches; I am sure that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) will get her own back on colleagues later this evening. If we bring in mixed mode, thousands of people will never again be able to enjoy their gardens. We are not talking about 1,000 or 2,000 people, but many thousands, and that is not acceptable.
	Let me address the Ministers. I know how the system works. Ministers are suddenly transferred into a new Department. The technology on air transport is not straightforward, but there are civil servants who understand it, and obviously the air transport industry understands it pretty well. People like me are never asked for advice by Ministers. Only one Minister has asked me for advice, despite the fact that I have lived under a flight path for 45 years. I understand the position, and things are very difficult for Ministers. It is difficult to come into a new Department determined to change the policy that is already in place. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), and the Secretary of State have a chance to show that they have guts and determinationthat they are politicians who will work for the people of the United Kingdom. By that I mean that they will look at the long-term future of air transport. I care about the industry, and so do the people in my constituency who suffer its noise. They care about it because it is they who built up and worked for the industry.

David Wilshire: The hon. Lady fails to point out to the House the fact that the problem is that Heathrow is losing routes. It is a question not of gaining them, but of stopping the haemorrhage and getting back the ones we have lost.
	The hon. Member for Lewes went on to show even more clearly that he did not have the slightest idea what he was talking about when he said that a new high-speed rail link was an effective alternative. In an intervention on the Secretary of State, I rather made the point that the choice of flying to Amsterdam or of catching a train to London and then a tube is a no-contest. People would simply fly somewhere else. High-speed rail is essential for people who want to travel to London from the north, but not if people want to go to Tokyo.
	The Liberal Democrat motion claims that the consultation is deeply flawed. The justification advanced for that is that the Department for Transport has consulted with BAA. I should have thought that we would condemn the Department for not consulting with BAA, because when, tragically, there is a crash, I have never yet heard anybody say that the crash inspectors must not consult with the airframe and engine manufacturers. It is common sense to talk to those people.

David Wilshire: I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but I do not have time to get locked into a debate. I will happily answer him afterwards.
	The Liberal Democrat motion claims that the economic case is overstated. It is not. Heathrow is this country's only hub airport. Its continuing success is essential for the future of the British economy and for the UK's ability to compete internationally. It is essential for Heathrow to see off foreign competition. It is essential to safeguard tens of thousands of jobs, many of which are those of my constituents.
	A Labour Member raised the question of a brand new hub airport somewhere else. Yes, if the map was blank, we could have a discussion about whether Heathrow was a sensible place for our hub airport, but we are where we are. If we build a brand new airport somewhere else, the first thing that would happen, as happens at any other new airport, is that people would build houses next to it. It would require the most massive subsidy from public funds. It would result in a huge number of jobs in west London and in my constituency disappearing, even if all they had to do was move across to the Thames estuary. It would lead to a serious loss of foreign business and foreign investment. If the foreign people round Heathrow were forced to go somewhere else, my guess is that they would go to Paris or Frankfurt rather than scuttle out to the Thames estuary.
	My case is simple. Solving the runway problem at Heathrow is essential for my constituency, for the Thames valley, for London and for the whole of the United Kingdom. I beg the House not simply to take my word for it. Listen to the majority of my constituents. Listen to the formal opinion of Spelthorne borough council. Listen to the trade unions, which also want to protect their members' jobs. Listen to local, regional and national businesses, and then listen to the passengers. Heathrow urgently needs another runway, provided we can overcome the environmental problems.

Martin Linton: I am grateful for a six-minute chance to explain my difficulty. I certainly cannot support the Liberal Democrat motion, which is deeply flawed and appears to want to abolish runway alternation or, as the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) called it, runway alteration, which might be a better idea. I have sympathy with some of the other points, such as keeping the cap on flights at 480,000.
	I could not have supported the Conservative amendment if it had been selected. The Conservatives are deeply divided on the fundamental issues. I also cannot support the Government amendment, because it refers to the economic case for expansion, presupposing that there is an economic case for expansion at Heathrow. The title of the consultation document, Adding capacity at Heathrow airport, also presupposes that the outcome of the consultation will be additional capacity.
	I want the present limit, 480,000 flights, to be maintained. That is about 40 planes an hour. I have confidence that the Ministers will approach the consultation with an open mind. I hope that they will have the courage to say no to British Airways and to the British Airports Authority and come up with the answer that I think is the right one, which will not allow any expansion of Heathrow or any added capacity.
	I shall make two short points in my brief contribution. First, I reiterate the point that I made to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about the 54 dB contour. People who live within the 57 dB contour suffer far more. I understand the difficulty of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Alan Keen), but they are only tens of thousands. People who live within the 54 dB contour are hundreds of thousands. The end of runway alternation and the imposition of mixed mode would increase the number of people within the 54 dB contour from the present 633,000 to 750,000. That is almost 120,000 more people being subjected to aircraft noise.
	People may think that 54 dB is nothing. I had a public meeting in my constituency with 250 people there complaining about 54 dB noise. I can promise my hon. Friends in the rest of south London that if mixed mode comes in and the 54 dB contour goes right across south London, they will have public meetings full of exactly the same kind of people protesting about the amount of noise above their heads. The maps provided by the Department for Transport show that the 54 dB contour, which currently reaches as far as Battersea, would extend as far as New Cross, so a whole new slice of London will be subjected to it.
	I have taken a group of nine Battersea residents to see my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), the Minister, who has been understanding and co-operative. I have written to him with the bones of a solution to the problem; it lies in the part of the consultation about westerly preference. It is a huge anomaly that of every 40 aircraft that land at Heathrow every average hour, 30 land over London and only 10 land going east. Almost all those 10 land over Windsor rather than the southern runway.
	There is a flight path into Heathrow that crosses Windsor great park, reservoirs and farm land; hardly anybody lives under it at all. An aircraft using that path to land would disturb only deer, fish and cattle. There is only one village under that flight path and it has a population of 1,609. I am not saying that it should get something that we do not get, but if there were fairness and equal numbers landed from each direction, that would be a huge improvement for the long-suffering residents of south London. I am advocating not that that village should bear the brunt of the noise, but that there should be a fair share through the ending of unnecessary westerly preference.
	There is a huge snag, which is the Cranford agreement; I have every sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Alan Keen), in whose constituency there is a small pocket of streets right up against the fence near the northern runway. Clearly, people living in them should not be subjected to aircraft taking off above their heads. As my hon. Friend said, the answer is money for them to move. That would unlock the potential for aircraft to land at Heathrow going east and save a huge amount of disturbance.

Susan Kramer: Madam Deputy Speaker, I am very conscious of the time available and the number of people who want to speak, so I shall take as read my very strong views on a lot of issuesclimate change, the negative impact of the third runway, the damage to Sipson, the impact on schools, learning, air quality and traffic congestion, and the huge potential loss for the air-rail hub at Heathrow.
	I shall also say little about the quality of the consultation, but it so offended my constituents that Richmond council put out its own survey that had almost 10,000 responses, of which 90 per cent. opposed expansion. That gives an idea of the strength of feeling locally. Furthermore, we did our own little survey, to which there have been 850 responses. Having tabulated the first 450 of them, we know that 99 per cent. of those oppose expansion at the airport.
	Noise is the issue mentioned over and overpeople who cannot have weddings outside or sit in their gardens whenever aircraft are overhead. There was a wonderful little letter from a certain young William, who cannot hear Thomas the Tank Engine. The impact on kids and families is very significant. The very thought that we would end up with mixed mode makes life unbearable; a phenomenal number of people in my area have said that they would simply have to move.
	I want to focus on what seems to be the heart of the Government's argument: their economic case, which I find very specious. Listening to those arguments is like listening to the people who argued once upon a time that the way to develop London's economy was to bring motorways criss-crossing through the city to meet the demand for cars. It is exactly the same now with air travel. Of course Heathrow is a hub airport but, as I said earlier, the point about hub airports is that constantly expanding them has diminishing returns. It is attractive to the aviation industry to bring more transfer passengers into HeathrowBA and BAA love that, because it serves their narrow business interests extremely well.
	The former chief executive of BAA, Stephen Nelson, said that he thought that 35 per cent. of the expanded number of passengers would be transfer traffic. All continental airports compete for transfer traffic, not destination traffic. Having additional flights to more destinations when all the key destinations are already being served to virtual saturation point brings very little economic benefit. The Government have not absorbed that, and Heathrow is the obvious example. As the Secretary of State said, the number of destinations served at Heathrow has dropped by almost a fifth over the past few years. Passenger numbers have stayed steady and London has gone through its strongest period of economic growth, with more companies coming to London and this area than ever before. There is a complete disconnect in the thinking.
	The very complex booklet on UK air passenger demand that has been part of the consultation is conceptually utterly naive, looking merely at a linear relationship between the number of passengers and gross domestic product. It is mathematically complex but has very little understanding of actual behaviour and economic drivers and of the fact that here in London business is changing. Business people do not want to be put on a flight every 10 minutes by their employersthey used to accept that, but no longer. Businesses are trying to reduce their carbon footprint. New technologies are coming through for video conferencing and other ways of communication. High-speed rail is increasingly a preferred option. We are in a period of dynamism and change, and the Government are clinging to an old technology and an old strategy just when they need not do so. The logic of what they say is that we must constantly grow and grow. If there are six new runways in Beijing, then my goodness, we must have more runways here in London. That is utterly unsustainable. If we say that at some point we must draw a line in the sand, let us draw it now before we do additional damage to London's economy and quality of life.
	What brings people to this city is in large part the quality of life that is on offer. Expansion means that parts of London and the south-east that have never been impacted on by noise will be greatly impacted by it, including the City and Canary Wharf and, may I say, Kensington and Chelsea. The minute the spouse of a major executive of an American bank says, I'm damned if I'm going to go and live in that city, because it's bloody unbearable, that is the point at which the economic change begins to be delivered in London and we start to lose out. Anyone who thinks that the number of destinations is key should take a look at Frankfurt. It has the most destinations of any of the cities in Europe, but it is not attracting businesses away from the UK or anywhere else because people do not want to live there. That is the important underlying issue.
	In my last seconds, I say to the Conservatives that this is the day when they must stand up for stopping this expansion now and for ever. Never mind the typothis is the day to show true colours, stand together and bring an end to this absolutely idiotic plan to expand capacity at Heathrow.

Steve Webb: I shall start by picking up where the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) left off, as the link between aviation and climate change provides the context for this debate. The right hon. Gentleman will know that only last November the Department for Transport projected emissions growth from aviation. It said that, even taking account of the radiative forcing effects, 9 per cent. of our current emissions come from aviation; by 2020 it will rise to 15 per cent.; and by 2050, 29 per cent. That means huge potential growth in the emissions from aviation, and here we are looking at expanding a major airport. The two simply do not sit together, and if we are serious about tackling climate change, we have to say no to the third runway at Heathrow.
	This has been a debate of contrasts. We have had some very clear contributions, and it is noticeable that all four Back-Bench contributions from Labour Members were opposed to the Government's position. The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Alan Keen) provided a knowledgeable and passionate defence of his constituents and their interests; the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton), who is no longer in his place, raised the issue of those just below the top decibel threshold and the many more who will be affected by the noise impact of Heathrow; the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) talked about the growth in promises, but the dodgy consultations that we have already seen on nuclear power and we are seeing now with Heathrow; and the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton highlighted, as have others, the role of BAA in all this. No one doubts that it has to supply information; no one doubts that it is an interested party, but it has to be open and transparent.
	I echo the tributes paid to the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) for her perseverance, which should not have been necessary. The information should have been in the public domain. If the Government have nothing to hide, why will they not [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says It is from a sedentary position, but I strongly suspect that there is a long list of information that the hon. Member for Putney has requested that has not been put in the public domainenvironmental information, for example, which needs to be in the public domain now.
	Before moving on, I should also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), who has been absolutely unambiguous about her position on the third runway and has been a doughty campaigner. The contrast between her position and that of the official Opposition could not be more acute. The House has the right to know the position of each of the major parties. The Secretary of State is clearly pro a third runway, as she said earlier that there is a clear need for extra runway capacity at Heathrow. She did not say that it was subject to anything. The record will show that she said that [Interruption.] The Minister may wish to qualify it, but that is what the Secretary of State said.
	In contrast, the shadow Transport Secretary said that there were four tests, but the implication of that for another runway is that if the tests are passed, the runway goes ahead. When I intervened to ask her whether the runway would go ahead if the tests were passed, she said something to the effect that the tests were not being passed and it was all very difficult. But it is not very difficult. Either the runway should or should not go ahead or it is conditional on passing the tests. If the Conservatives are saying that it should go ahead subject to the passing of those tests, they should make that clear to the voters of London. The Conservative leader sent an e-mail to a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park on that very issue. One gets a slight sense that the Conservativesthough it pains me to use the expressionsay one thing to one set of people and something else to another set of people [Interruption.]

Norman Baker: The issue of the article in  The Sunday Times is important as Members of different parties have raised it this afternoon. Does the Minister believe there are factual inaccuracies in that report, and if so, what are they?